Billy (fucking) Budd
Old Man and the Sea
On the Origin of Species
Sorry Mr. Darwin, I’m glad you wrote it and I’m glad I read it, but Jebus, what a slog.
I was going to nominate Ethan Frome but read the noms for Heart of Darkness and realized that Conrad took the gold.
Were we in the same class? My whole class flunked that one. Cruel and unusual punishment! I imagine reluctant readers became non-readers after that one.
I don’t like Charles Dickens. Or Jane Austen. I know that a lot of people absolutely love one or both of those authors, but I just can’t get into them. Now, I haven’t read any Dickens since I was in high school, but an Austen came as a free book with my nook, and I decided to give it a try, maybe I’ve matured enough to appreciate her. Nope. Just as boring as ever.
Ethan Frome.
Patrick White, Tree of Man.
High School - anything by Emerson or Thoreau literally made me fall asleep in class.
College - Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich for a Contemporary Novel class. Took the F and hoped I could pull out a decent grade with the remaining 6 novels. One of the only books I just couldn’t finish.
Red Badge of Courage
Great Expectations.
I was never assigned this book for a class but I read it for “fun”. It’s one of my biggest literary disappointments: dozens of extremely repetitive and formulaic adventures. I’ve read quite a few other medieval works. Some were OK, some were great but Le Morte D’Arthur was just terrible.
Side question: with this in mind, should I read Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain)?
To answer the OP, I was forced to read André Dhôtel’s Le Pays où l’on n’arrive jamais when I was 12. A couple of pages each day was the most I could take. It almost disgusted me from ever reading a book again. I retitled it : La Fin où l’on n’arrive jamais.
A triology of plays by Arnold Wesker, an English jewish socialist 1960s playwright. One of them was called, The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree.
The mercy of Lethe has blanked out everything else.
However it created a strong distaste for the morbid details of the humours and warmth of jewish family life extolled and expanded upon by jewish authors. Despite the fact I like jewish humorists from Israel Zangwill to ‘Potash and Perlemutter’, either of which I would have welcomed in place, and my love of Clinton-era sitcoms; some of which had jewish writers.
The Great Gatsby.
Christ, but I hated that novel.
*One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich *was one of the most boring books I ever read. However, this was pretty much the point of the book, and at the end, it hit me how meaningful the boringness of the book actually was. In fact, if one had found the book entertaining and exciting all the way through, the ending would have very little impact on you, I would assume. For me, it was profound and thus the only book where being bored through it was actually enjoyable (but only in retrospect at the terrific ending).
Can’t really think of many other books I found actively boring. I pretty much liked everything I had to read for school. And the ones I didn’t like, it wasn’t because they were boring, but because they were awful (Lord Of The Flies).
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. Dull, dull, dull.
The Sound and the Fury. Not only did we have to read the stupid thing - we had to *BUY *it ourselves. I was rather proud of my smart-ass self when the instructor asked what we thought the title meant, and I said the sound was a yawn and the fury was having to pay $6.95 for the book. (This was in the mid-70s when that was a significant chunk of change.)
Possibly “I Heard the Owl Call My Name”?
For me, it would be Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence. Pity, really, I think I might appreciate it better as an adult.
Surprised by some of the answers - Heart of Darkness, for instance, was way too short for me to get bored. Although it could be condensed even further, I suppose - “Guy goes up a river, he meets this other guy who says “The Horror! The Horror!” and then dies” was how we characterised it.
Tess of the Durbevilles. But I think it was my incredibly boring teacher’s fault. Analysing every single word completely ripped any joy to be had from the prose.
The only book I can remember not reading, I did the first-chapter, last-chapter deal with that one, was The House of the Seven Gables. I’m pretty sure I gave it a scathing review in my book report, too. I was at just the right point in my teenagery impatience that I just couldn’t be soused to pay attention to it and hated it from the first paragraph. I don’t remember why, I don’t remember anything about it other than it’s the only book I didn’t read. I should probably pick it up sometime and find out what I missed. I’ll probably like it.
Wow, I like a great many of the books mentioned, and I am not a person into scholarly reading. The one book I could not stand that I had to read for school whas The Pilgrim’s Progress. What a boring, boring allegory. If you’re gonna make us read an allegory, how 'bout Gulliver’s Travels?
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, by Vladimir Lenin. BOR-ING!!!
I also intensely disliked Dostoevskii’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov (from the way they’re padded, you can tell the guy was being paid per installment) and I loathe Anna Kerenina (I don’t give a damn about who was “vexed,” or about Levin’s plans for land reform). Chernyshevskii’s What is to Be Done? is also a tedious, tedious read.
I see a pattern emerging here… :dubious:
I forgot about Heart of Darkness, but that would take a third place behind my previously nominated books, because even though I had to only skim due to the immense boredom of having to read it all, I could tell that in theory there was a good story behind there somewhere.